Every time we sit down for a meal out on the deck, a wasp arrives, within minutes. It circles us and inspects the food for a while and then flies away.
The one time the wasp (or at least a wasp, I have no way of knowing if it was the same one) found our food worth eating was back in June when I the food was served with boiled eggs. We could see it cutting off pieces of egg white and flying away with them.
Since then, it comes, it looks, it leaves.
I’m puzzled. Surely the wasp arrives because it has smelled the food, so it must have a good sense of smell. But can’t it detect from the smell whether the food is anything it would actually want to eat?
They seem to prefer meat – when I eat in my garden, they come in seconds and take huge chunks of ham and meat (e.g. 2 x 2 mm) and fly away with them. They’re not too keen in white bread, cheese, berries, cakes or anything else.
Back when Ingrid used to eat meat, she was fond of liver pâté, and the wasps used to like that too. Now that we’re mostly eating vegetarian food, there’s not much for wasps here…